Michael Cluff- A Poem

  Odyssey to Ashwater

  Samantha Grey pauses
  on the edge of the cantilever
  and waits......

  The sun touches the hair
  of Lucas' left arm
  and its copper red hairs
  flashes into her cortex
  at breakneck speed
  blinding the mature woman inside.

  He is contemplating Schopenhauer
  in a corrupted version of low German
  from an edition the Nazi
  refused to approve in 1938
  on-line graduate courses
  are an ambiguous solution
  for him until the high holidays
  are over.

  He never sees Samantha
  even though she is above him now
  and closer to God
  and beneficent closure
  than he may ever be.

  Audrey waits in the inbetween zone
  and hardly moves a mote of dust
  the fine soot
  of strange factories
  and smelt chimneys
  best befit her and Lucas
  these marsh thinning days.

  II.

  Under the ripples of relief
  that barely teases the town
  the soil remains electric
  in the need to shift and stifle,
  Martin Crosse perpetually
  unstains his white dress shirt
  and Sisyphus gets to sleep in
  a dog works just as much
  as the most focused banker
  and begonia expert:
  neither have had a sufficient bath
  in these many clotted years.

  Lucas grimes the text up even more
  with the spittle from his onion-defined throat
  while Sisyphus intermittently will chase
  solid-sized pebbles Audrey tosses now
  at Samantha and inadvertently
  always misses.

  Brisket and belvederes
  and elbowed elation
  is just the soupcon to keep
  Lucas reading on.